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Abstract

Exchange of knowledge is becoming increasingly important to modern organizations. In this chapter, it is explained what this elementary knowledge exchange consists of and how a virtual workplace can support knowledge exchange between workers. A scenario from the medical domain illustrates how physicians can improve their knowledge exchange by utilizing the virtual workplace models introduced. Better adaptation to the rapidly changing nature of providing healthcare is a desirable effect of improved knowledge exchange between physicians. Explicit models concerning possible physical, social and digital contexts of knowledge exchange are discussed, as well as models which depict how knowledge relatedness enables intelligent knowledge exchange. Researchers studying virtual workplace models for industry and academic purposes belong to the intended audience of this chapter. Administrators of public sector or other non-profit agencies who wish to incorporate virtual workplace models and methods into their daily operations can also benefit from the contents discussed.

Key Terms in this Chapter

Knowledge Exchange: Knowledge exchange involves the broadcasting of knowledge items between workers, or between a worker and a software agent and vice versa, with as specific goal to reduce the need for knowledge of a worker.

Support Relatedness: Support relatedness comprises theory with as goal to decrease a worker’s need for knowledge and to improve the flow of knowledge between workers.

Software Agent: A software agent is an encapsulated computer system that is situated in some environment and that is capable of flexible, autonomous action in that environment.

Knowledge Transformation Process: A knowledge transformation process causes the properties of (a) knowledge item(s) to change and as a result the knowledge item(s) can be classified differently due to the modified properties.

Object Role Modelling (ORM): ORM is an information modelling language which has a well-defined formal semantics and sufficient expressive power to describe the Universe of Discourse.

Input and Output Relatedness: Input and output relatedness focuses on the existence of overlap between received knowledge and between broadcasted knowledge.